GNOSTICISM III Still, beating, working its way and below in dark woods small creatures leap. Rip First line has to make your brain race that's how Homer does It, that's how Frank O'Hara does it, why at such a pace Muses slam through the house-there goes one (fainting) up the rungs of your strange BULLFIGHT, buttered almost in a nearness to skyblue Thy pang-Pollock yourself! Just to hang onto life is why Heaven's lips! I dreamed of a page in a book containing the word "bird" and I d " b . d " entere 1f. Bird grinds on, grinds on, thrusting against black. Thrusting wings, thrusting again, hard banks slap against it either side, that bird was exhausted. IV at food with scrawny lips. Lips at night. Nothing guiding it, bird beats on, night wetness on it. A lion looks up. Smell of adolescence in these creatures, this ordinary night for them. Astonishment inside me like a separate person, sweat-soaked. How to grip. For some people a bird sings, feathers shine. I just get this this. They found the dog! Mother died! He didn't mean to hang up J.ust a bad connection! No time for lipstick if I answer that but isn't there a Ladies outside Philosophy anyway they never start till ten after oh rats now I've lost the Gertrude Stein quote was it beefsteak?-what II swarm of clearnesses and do they amaze you, in between when you hear the phone and when you get it, all palpable explanations of why it rang and what to do and what'd it be like if your brain were this fit all the time? Say, Forgot? how the mind goes at it, you open the window (late), there is a siffling sound, that cold smell before sleep, roofs, frozen staircase, frozen stair, a piece of it comes in. Comes in, stands in the room a bit of a column of it alive. At first no difference, then palely; a dust, an indentation, stain of some guest centuries ago. at the moment in the interminable dinner when Coetzee basking icily across from you at the faculty table is all at once there like a fox in a glare, asking And what are your znterests? his face a glass that has shattered but not yet fallen. V Some guest at this very hour, was it final love or the usual I said! You said! Oh, the body, no listen, unpinning itself: slam of car door, snow. Far, far, far, far. " h h littl d '-L:' " . . . w at tee wor al ter means . . . (I. Kant, Inaugural Dissertation 2.399.4-6) Washed in the blood of that. Stuffed September night, the hot leaves bump on swollen breezes and a fat black moonlessness. I got up (3 A.M.) 56 THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 24, 2003